Beating Characters Into Submission.
Posted by: Finch in Editing, Writing, tags: process, TGKOther people call that “editing,” I suppose, but that’s what my edits were like during the first pass of this latest, most complex revision. I mentioned that earlier, so I’m not going to belabor the point other than to say it was hard but rewarding, and I’m really happy with the resultant edits, now that the first, painful pass is complete.
So now it’s a simple numbers game. I’m about 3/4 of the way through the second pass of the big revision, and I’m doing it like this:
Because it was such a sweeping change, I feel as though I should be not only checking the changes for little tense and person shifts I missed the first time through (and there are a scant few of those), but also checking to assure I’ve kept tone and character intact. I had some good insights towards the end of the first pass that standardized some concepts and let me work in a little bit of the original internal dialogue without defeating the purposes of the original person/tense shift, so now I’ve gone through and made sure I’ve leveraged those ideas throughout the book.
As for the changes, I feel as though they’ve made for a much stronger story. It’s okay if Erik relies on denial and dissimulation to survive, psychologically speaking, so long as the reader can perceive the internal conflict he’s going through and identify with it, or at least understand that it’s a defense mechanism being used by a desperate man under duress to try to cope with a highly stressful and deadly situation. That makes him sympathetic, even tragic — which is good, considering what I’ll be doing to him soon…
But that’s a story for another day.
In the meantime, 3/4 done with pass 2 means that pass will be done tomorrow — I’ve been doing a quarter a day on this pass. After that, there’s some basic polishing to be done, a few minor elements to incorporate, and some verbage to trim, and it’ll be ready for lobbing at my agent and co-conspirator.
